EXPANSION AND DIVERSIFICATION OF THE OFFER OF TECHNOLOGY HIGHER COURSES IN BAIXADA FLUMINENSE (RJ)
Work and education. Professional and Technological Education. Technology Higher Courses; University education; Education in Urban Peripheries.
In 2019, according to the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (INEP), there were 8,400 Technology Higher Courses (THCs) in Brazil, of which only 14% were in the public sphere (federal, state or municipal), and the rest being in the private sphere. THCs are a short-term degree, with a minimum load of 1,600 to 2,400 hours. With the aim of training with a focus on the job market, its offer has shown substantial growth in recent years. The objective of this research is to analyze trends in the development of THCs in the Baixada Fluminense, a region of the state of Rio de Janeiro neighboring the state capital. The cities that make up this region emerged and grew irregularly, without urban planning, which consolidated the Baixada Fluminense as an area with housing, social, basic sanitation, public safety and educational problems, composed of municipalities governed by politicians who cannot guarantee basic and quality public services for the population. Understanding how the expansion and diversification of THCs in this region took place is extremely important, as it will allow us to know whether this professional and technological education policy aims at training a new workforce or whether it aims at the ethical and moral conformation of workers front to unemployment and the precariousness of work and life in society. It is a basic research, of qualitative analysis, of an explanatory nature, which falls into the category of documentary research whose theoretical and methodological reference is historical-dialectical materialism. With this research, it is expected to gather a set of information and analyzes that will show us the nature of the process of expanding and diversifying the supply of THCs in the Baixada Fluminense. The central hypothesis is that these lean, flexible and precarious courses do not form people to appropriate technical and professional knowledge in an integrated way with scientific, technological and cultural knowledge of the world of work and life in society, but a sensible formation, flexible, pragmatic, immediate, linked to the immediate demands of the labor market. In this perspective, training is for a new type of worker, conformed to naturally accepting the volatilities of the market and its uncertainties, taking the blame for their precarious living conditions on themselves.